Farmlands

Ran the Farmlands with Josh Grabel, Eric Foster-Moore, Jeff Hartley, and a ton of rafters last weekend.  

Log above Lava is still there. I was floating by the log trying to estimate if there was enough room for a raft right here, and flipped!  I rolled up very quickly and paddled to the eddy on the right, but that was a reminder to always be paying attention.  There are two log portages between put-in and Lava.   -One is very obvious and in slow moving water, looks like portage is on the right, but the left is faster, less muddy, and you have an easier place to get back into the water. - Second is after a couple log ducks in the gorge shortly above Lava.  The river pools  up and you can see some debris on the left after the river takes a bend to the left.  Not many boaters would be foolish enough to drop over this horizon without at least boat scouting so you should be fine.  There is a line far right, but it is solid class five and you miss, you go under the wood.  Portage is on the left.  Not too hard.  There is a big eddy on the left above this one, be careful here though. The run is definitely worth doing right now, just take it slow. Eric, Josh and I decided to continue down past the take out to the Brothers with the intention of getting boof practice on the Little one.  We figured we had time to do this since it would take the rafts awhile to take out at the Truss bridge, but not enough time to try to do the whole run.  The section between the Truss bridge and the  pool above Big Brother is one of my favorite sections of water because of how high quality it is and its one on top of the other with relatively low consequences.  We don't get out of boats, just fly down.  Big Brother was on the high side, we portaged and got our boofs on at Little Brother.  We wanted to try again so climbed up on river right, which at this level was way tougher and sketchier than running the falls, but we got up there and did round two.  After this we took the river left portage trail back up to the top of Big Brother, ferried across and took the trail out to the road.  After only a couple minutes Jeff showed up with the car, then the rafters another five or so minutes later. Here is a video, this will answer questions as to what the wood looks like.  And provide a little entertainment. Farmlands section of the White Salmon from Jacob Cruser on Vimeo. -Jacob